Wow. The total really WAS that small?
As even they admitted, it's a bit late in the year for the National Weather Service in Marquette to release snow totals for the winter that really wasn't a winter. But release them they did yesterday, and two numbers really stood out for me. The first? That no place in the UP—not one—received over 200” of snow this year.
The other? That here in the city of Marquette we received a whopping (double checking the number just to make sure) 34 inches of snow this past winter.
34 inches. That's less than a meter of snow. If you were hold up a yardstick, the total of snow—every single flake we received this year—wouldn't reach to the top. And if you consider that we received 12 inches of snow—over a third of our entire total—during one weekend in January; well, then you understand just how non-winter our winter really was this year.
Wow.
I know that while it was occurring I wrote a lot about just how weird our winter was, and seeing the actual figures makes me realize that it was indeed bizarre. Even the National Weather Service Office, which is five miles west of Marquette and a thousand feet higher in elevation, only received 127 inches. They're located in one of the prime snowfall areas of the UP, yet only saw half of what they usually get.
As I kept writing about our non-winter winter this year I wondered if I was perhaps engaging in a little hyperbole. It now looks like I wasn't.
I have no idea if this was just the freakiest of winters or a harbinger of what our climate-changed world is morphing into. I'm guessing it's the latter, seeing as how the Weather Service also said that our five winters with the lowest snowfall totals (including this past year) have all come since 2000.
Maybe in the future we won't even be able to use a yard-stick as a compassion tool. Wouldn't THAT be something?
Have a great weekend; after all, there's no snow in the forecast, even if a little rain may visit us, much like it did throughout January and February this year!
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